The educational achievement and attainment of young people in the United States has been a long-standing issue of concern. While analyses of long-term trend data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that students in the United States have made gains in reading and mathematics over the past few decades, a sizeable…

Normative data reported by publishers of the California Achievement Test, the Comprehensive Tests of Basic Skills, and the SRA Assessment Survey were used to illustrate a procedure for specifying goals for Title I programs in terms of normal curve equivalent (NCE) gains. The procedure was based on the amount of growth reflected in student reading…